Side Effect: M
by Cattarang
Summary: You know how they say the side effects of a cure can sometimes be worse than the disease itself? That seems to be the problem for Aria Tsukino. She only wanted to ask Hiro Hamada for help reversing her condition, but when she realizes the problem might be bigger than herself, she and Big Hero 6 will have to seek help from the last person they ever wanted to see again. Hiro x OC
1. Chapter 1

Aria tapped her fingers nervously on the table. She kept her head down, and her dark eyes shifted back and forth every so often. She knew it probably looked rather odd, to see a girl sitting all alone in a cafe, looking over her shoulder constantly, like she was being followed by the mob or something, but her nerves were just getting the better of her. She'd travelled so far, after all, to meet him. She couldn't screw this up, not again. Bad things happened when she screwed things up.

As she drummed her fingers rhythmically, eyes fixing on the cup of coffee and untouched pastry in front of her, she didn't notice the spoon sitting a few inches from her hand start to slide towards her slowly. She jumped, startled, when it bumped into her hand, and quickly swatted it away. It flew off the table and clattered several feet away, though, which drew more attention to her than she was cofortable with. Laughing it off awkwardly, mumbling about how clumsy she was, she retreived the offending tableware with a red face. Her stuttered explanation seemed to placate the other patrons of the cafe, and when the last pair of eyes looked away, she let out the breath she was holding, and slumped in her chair.

'Get control!' she told herself silently, clenching her fists. 'Don't make a scene, control yourself!' As she sat, trying to concentrate, her attention was pulled away when her coffee cup was refilled, and the woman doing the refilling spoke.

"Everything alright, sweety?" the owner of the cafe asked, one hand on her hip and her head cocked to the side, in what Aria thought looked like a very maternal gesture of concern.

"Oh! U-um, yeah, I'm just, uh, waiting." She rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly, not really knowing how to put into words what she was doing here. After all, how could you explain her very peculiar situation? "Um, you did say Hiro Hamada lives here...right?" When Aria had first entered the eatery, clutching the slip of paper with the address printed on it tightly in her hands, she'd asked for Hiro, and had been told by the owner that he would be around soon, after coming home from school. That had been nearly an hour ago.

"Yes, but he's probably off with his friends. They're always doing just...the craziest things!" The owner laughed, shrugging dramatically. "I never know what they're up to. But, why did you say you need to see Hiro...?"

"U-umm, well, I, uh-" Aria went red again, stumbling to find an excuse. But in her clumsy stuttering, there was a slight commotion on the other side of the dining room; an older gentleman was shouting about being allergic to cats, while a very fat calico was sitting on the table in front of him.

"Oh! Mochi, no! Bad kitty!" The owner rushed away from Aria's table to swat at the cat, who gleefully jumped down off the man's table, and proceeded to lead the owner on a chase to catch him. Aria was grateful for the distraction. Too many questions would lead to bad things, just like screwing up.

'Was this a stupid idea?' she thought, taking the porcelain mug in both hands and peering at her reflection in the coffee. 'He's my last hope, this has to work. If he doesn't want to help, I...I don't know what else to do.'

As she mused on her own thoughts, Aria almost didn't hear the jingle of the bell above the door, or the laughter of the five people who had walked in, adressing the owner with a great deal of familiarity. Not until, that is, she heard one specific person utter a name she'd come to recognize very well.

"Haha, yeah, well, I'll be right back, gatta go check and see if Baymax's updates have finished installing." Her eyes snapped up to the boy who'd spoken, just as he turned to leave the group, which was lingering around the pastry case. That was him; he looked different than the newspaper clippings. Taller, less mop-headed, older by a few years, but there was no mistaking him. She'd finally found Hiro Hamada.

"Hiro!" Jumping up from her seat so quickly that she toppled her chair, Aria sprang after him, clumsily dodging tables and chairs. As she made her way aross the dining room, several forks and spoons and napkin holders from the various tables rattled sluggishly after her, some rolling off their tables and onto the ground. When she called his name, Hiro glanced over his shoulder, confused by the unfamiliarity of her voice, and the urgent tone she was using. He was greeted by a slightly unusual sight; a girl with wild black hair and even wilder dark eyes trying her hardest not to knock anything over, and failing as she ran over.

"Uh, yeah, that's me," he replied as she finally came to a stop in front of him. "Do I know- Look Out!" He was cut off, as a metalic glint behind Aria's head caught his eyes. It was a fork, strangely enough, which appeared to have been lobbed at the back of her head. Thinking quickly, he yanked her sideways, only barely dodging the cutlery himself.

"A fork?" The tall blonde girl, Honey Lemon, Aria knew from the newspapers, stepped forward to inspect the fork, which had lodged itself into the wall behind where Hiro stood. "Did someone throw a fork?"

"Who's throwing forks?" The owner, whom Aria would come to know as Aunt Cass, accused, staring daggers at the other patrons. "I'm not afraid to throw a fork back!"

"Uh...what even is going on?" Wasabi asked, looking from Cass to Hiro to the girl who'd only narrowly avoided having an impromtu lobotomy. "Who is this?"

"That's what I was just about to ask," Hiro said, looking to the girl. "Do I know you? And, why did you almost get stabbed with a flying fork?" He paused, before continuing, "Why do I even have to ask that question?"

"I'm sorry." Aria finally spoke up, swallowing her embarassment and nervousness. "You don't know me, but I know you. You're Hiro Hamada, leader of Big Hero 6," she started, tucking a flyaway behind her ear. "I've been following you, all of you, in the papers; you're all really big news in Los AngelOsaka-"

"Hey, I've got a cousin from Los AngelOsaka!" Aria blinked, as a rather scrappy, unkempt boy interupted her. "Do you know a Dave? Kinda, I dunno, fat and stinky, he's got a lot of comic books."

"Uh...no, I don't, sorry."

"Let her get on with it, Fred!" The scrappy kid was smacked in the back of the head by who Aria recognized as Gogo Tomago, who was giving her a rather sour look. "SOME of us have stuff we have to get to."

"I, uh, I just...you're the go-to guy for electromagnetic cybernetics," Aria blurted, turning back to Hiro. "Top of the feild, they say, and, I just, I really need your help!" As she blurted out the last part, another spoon lifted from it's place on a nearby table, flying through the air and smacking Aria in the side of the head. Gogo and Fred openly laughed, while Wasabi stiffled a chuckle, but Hiro only stared in fascinaion. When the spoon struck the side of her face, it didn't clatter to the ground. It merely hung there, like it was somehow attached to her head. Almost like-

"Do you...have a magnet in your head?" Hiro asked, reaching out and plucking the spoon from her temple. Letting it go, he was startled when it immediately reattached to her temple. It was almost like putting magnets on a refidgerator. Aria looked at him helplessly.

"No. I don't have any magnets in me," she said, taking the spoon herself, and trying to set it down an the nearby counter, only to have it stick to her hand. She tried again to let it go, but gave up when it wouldn't budge. "But I think I've been turned into one."

There was silence among the group as her statement sunk in. Hiro was the first to speak after the prolonged pause.

"...What's your name?"

"Aria Tsukino. Please, you've gatta help me! I've travelled a long way across Japanifornia just to see you; you're probably the only person who could possibly help me get rid of this, or control it, or something!" She didn't mean to sound so desperate, but in reality, she really was. This wasn't just about spoons and forks, and this wasn't even about metal in general. Being caught in your own electro-magnetic hell had far worse consequences.

"...I'll see what I can do."


	2. Chapter 2

"Updates completed." Baymax's voice was a lot softer than Aria had expected. Very calming. Not like she could hear him all that well, though. She was a good 25 feet from the open garage door, where Hiro's friends were congregated, and Hiro himself was running through the list of installed updates on his computer. "Aerodynamic stabilizer upgraded, thrusters optimized, auto-inflation patched. No more updates in the queue."

"Sweet!" Hiro said, leaning back in his chair. "You should be good to go for a few more months, then. At least until I can patch through those upgrades I'm still designing." He smiled as Baymax stepped out of his charging station, before turning back to Aria, who was still lingering far away.

"Hey, c'mon, we don't bite!" Fred said, flopping down on the small couch in the corner, motioning Aria closer. "Well, I mean, I don't. Gogo mi-eeEEOWW!" He was cut off as Gogo walked past, smacking him over the head.

"Uhh," she said, taking note of all the very fragile pieces of equipment she could see in the garage workshop. Fragile, metal equipment. "I-I don't think that's such a good idea…"

"You said you needed my help," Hiro pointed out, "so you'll have to get a little closer so I can scan you"

"I am sensing increasing levels of magnetic radiation," Baymax said, cutting off whatever Aria was about to say. The automaton's head turned towards the girl, who swallowed hard. "Are you in need of medical assistance?" He began to shuffle towards her, but she threw her hands up, backing up a few steps.

"No no no!" she said, trying to laugh it off, but her nerves were obvious in her voice. "I don't think you should get very close to me…I, uh…I tend to wipe computer's hard drives, if I get too close…" Hiro's eyebrow cocked, and he tossed a glance back at his friends.

"I don't think Baymax's program works like that," Honey Lemon said, but Hiro rose from his seat anyway, and followed Baymax.

"…Well, I have his hard drive backed up, just in case. It's not gonna hurt anything to let Baymax try to scan you." He sped up, extending a hand to Aria. "You asked for my help, so let me help you." His smile was crooked, stretching farther up one half of his face than the other, which made his features seem far younger than he really was. Aria hesitated, biting hip lip nervously, before letting him take her hand, and lead her closer to the garage and Baymax. But as she got closer, just like she'd feared, she saw Baymax's feet start to slide over the pavement towards her.

"Whoa, whoa, I thought his skeleton was carbon fiber?" Wasabi said, looking up from tinkering with his gauntlets. Hiro grabbed one of Baymax's arms, trying to pull him out of Aria's pull, but it seemed to be stronger than it was in the café, and the inflatable medical caregiver collided with the small girl, throwing both onto the ground.

"It is," Hiro said, a laugh on the edge of his voice. "But the bearings are titanium…heh, must've forgotten….sorry Aria."

"I seem to have fallen," Baymax said, as Aria tried to wrestle herself out from under him. As the others broke into chatter, both surprised and slightly amused at the turn of events, Aria was having trouble not hyperventilating. 'This isn't happening,' she told herself, chest feeling too tight to breath. 'It's getting stronger…no, no, no…'

"Uh, Aria?" She was broken out of her panicked thoughts by Hiro, who had kneeled beside her, and was trying to shove Baymax off, though the whole 'magnet' thing was making it difficult. "Are you alright? You're muttering to yourself, you know."

"I didn't mean to come here and make trouble for you," she said, turning wide eyes up at him. "I just need help with this!"

"Hey, hey, I'm gonna help!" he reassured, grabbing both of her wrists, and dragging her up to her feet. Baymax was pushed to his feet as well, though he was unable to leave Aria's side. Very literally. "We'll just start with a simple scan, if there's anything wrong biologically, Baymax will find it. You got that buddy?" Hiro looked up at Baymax, who's cameras were already in the process of scanning the girl.

"Scan complete," he said, sifting through the information in his core processor. "No physical abrasions. White blood cell scans show low levels, immune system compromised. Clusters of somatic cells and neurons show mutation at the molecular level. Retrieving mutation analysis now." He paused then, and Aria's eyes darted from his face, to Hiro's, and then to the others, as they emerged from the workshop, curious about what Baymax had to say. She herself was curious as to what he would say, though she pretty much already knew. And it wasn't good. "Analysis complete. Cytotoxic T cell levels elevated. Suggests remission of metastasized tumors."

"Whoa, what?" For the first time since meeting her, Aria noticed Gogo had quite popping her gum, and was staring wide eyed.

"Shh shhh," Hiro shushed, as Baymax continued.

"Analysis inconclusive on unknown cell mutation, further scans recommended. Unusually high levels of magnetic radiation detected, unknown source."

"We know the source, Baymax," Hiro said, motioning towards Aria.

"Impossible. Organic life cannot carry a natural magnetic charge."

"…Then it can't be natural." Hiro looked at Aria, realization dawning on him. Suppressed immune system, t cells, mutations, it all made sense. "You're in remission for cancer, aren't you?" he asked, and behind him, Honey Lemon squeaked, and covered her mouth in shock. Aria only nodded, shrugging slightly.

"Billions of people have had cancer," Gogo said, grabbing Hiro's shoulder to turn him towards her. "How the hell does that make her magnetic!?" Hiro shook his head, turning his eyes back to Aria. She heaved a sigh, feeling slightly calmer, now that the cat was finally being let out of the bag.

"The cancer didn't," she said, playing with a stray locke of hair. "The treatment did, though."

Silence. The lot of them were quiet; until, that is, Fred decided to speak up.

"Heavy."

"I'm technically not allowed to talk about it. But technically, they weren't supposed to turn me into some magnetic freak, so, I guess the contract's already been voided." She noticed, as she spoke, Baymax was able to inch backwards a bit; the force was decreasing. 'Just keep calm,' she thought, taking a few deep breathes. 'Stay calm, and you can keep it under control.' "They described it as being like the radiation they've always used on patients, only more efficient. The old technique killed cancerous cells, but it also killed healthy, living cells too. The new technique was supposed to use a type of modified gamma radiation to target only mutated cells. It had to be programmed with my DNA to work."

"That's incredible," Hiro said quietly, his eyes wide, though she could see the thrill of possibility dancing behind them. He was interested in the tech, which was understandable. It was why she had come to him; someone so interested in tech like this might be able to reverse engineer it, and fix her. "It used DNA flagging to concentrate radiation on mutated tissues…that's brilliant!"

"In theory," Aria continued. "It worked pretty well at first, but my tumors metastasized unexpectedly. It spread from my central nervous system up through my spinal cord, into my brain. I guess that's what went wrong. The radiation had only ever been tested on body cells. I was the guinea pig for human neurological trials."

"Testing unverified medical technology on humans is unethical," Baymax interrupted.

"Yeah, well, tell that to my contract. Anyway, I was ejected from the trial program when I started wiping the computers in the hospital. They almost sent me in for an MRI," she paused, shuddering. "Thank god they kicked me out before then. It wasn't until I started pulling magnets off the fridge did I realize what had happened."

"Fred was right," Gogo said, crossing her arms. "This IS heavy." She turned towards Hiro, who could not stop staring at Aria. "What are we supposed to do? If she can't even get close to the garage, how are we gonna help?"

"I've gotta get more readings!" Hiro said, ditching the group suddenly, running off into the garage, and digging around in the clutter. Aria pursed her lips, as her eyes travelled the faces around her. Honey Lemon and Wasabi were speechless, but the former did reach a hand out, and pat Aria on the shoulder.

"If anyone can fix you," she said, "It'd be Hiro. Don't worry."


	3. Chapter 3

Watching Hiro's fingers fly across his keyboard and manipulate the projections on the 3D screen was almost like trying to count how many times a hummingbird beat it's wings. It was nearly impossible to keep up! His eyes darted across the screen at a similarly untraceable speed, and almost before she knew what was happening, he was up, feeding cord behind him to several electrodes.

"I'll need these on each temple," he said, approaching her and coming to the end of the cord. The tiny pads he offered her ran all the way across the driveway and back into the computer. "And one on the inside of your dominant wrist. I'm gonna do a few quick scans of my own, to try and pick up any mechanical signals."

"There's no machines in me generating the magnetic radiation," Aria said, sticking the tiny circles to the sides of her head, "there's not going to be any mechanical signals."

"True, but if this is electromagnetic, as I suspect, it's gonna read out into my computer like a flashdrive. I mean," he shrugged, taking hold of her hand, and turning it over, exposing her wrist. He stuck the electrode on, but didn't let go yet. "It's not like it'll spit coherent data out. It'll most likely just be a huge jumble of radiowaves. But it'll be easier to figure out what to do if I get that data." He smiled reassuringly at her, before quickly retreating to his computer. Tapping a few keys and bringing up a program, he initialized it, and started recording the signal.

"Are you able to pass on your magnet powers to other people?" Fred asked, poking at the electrode on one of her temples.

"Trust me," she replied, brushing his hand away, "you don't want to be magnetic."

"Uh, she-yeah I do! Can you imagine how awesome that would be!?"

"Yes. I can. And it isn't." She rolled her eyes at the blonde, but her attention was drawn back to Hiro and his computer, and he let out a shout of surprise. Aria desperately wanted to move closer to see what he was looking at, but she knew if she got too close, she would be a danger to the hard drive.

"Is there any way to, I dunno, turn it up?" Hiro asked her, tearing his eyes away from the scrolling list of signals popping up in the program window. They were all relatively weak signals, but they sure as hell weren't radiowaves.

"Turn it up?" she asked, "like, make myself…more magnetic?"

"Yes! Can you do that?" He looked positively thrilled at the information flooding in, and Aria wished she could be that thrilled about all of this. Of course, Hiro didn't have to live with it.

"I…can try." She knew the more emotional she was, the worse she could control the force of the magnetism. But she didn't know if she could force herself to let go. Maybe if she just concentrated harder.

At first, she just thought really hard about it. Maybe it was mind controlled, and she just had to achieve a higher level of focus to tap into it? But when that proved fruitless, she attempted to let her emotions go. She thought about anything and everything that would make her cry; sick puppies, orphans, needles, airplane crashes, but it still didn't seem to work. Hiro's smile slowly deflated, as he realized his request would have to go unanswered for now.

"Don't hurt yourself," he said, chuckling slightly. "It's fine, this is enough right here. Man." He paused and leaned back, gazing at the scrolling lines of seemingly random numbers and letters. To Aria, they meant next to nothing, but they made perfect sense to Hiro. "This is just…wow."

"What does all that mean?" Honey Lemon asked, walking up behind him and peering over his shoulder. "It doesn't really look like anything to me."

"It's…not microwave readings," Gogo said, leaning against the back of Hiro's chair, as she resumed popping her gum. "It looks more like gamma readings, but…that's impossible. She'd be fried to a crisp if it was gamma radiation, not to mention the rest of us, and this half of the globe."

"It's not gamma radiation," Hiro said, bringing up another window on the display. This one contained a generic body silhouette, with several sections of the brain lit up, as well as weak signals from several other parts of the body. "It's something else, it's not really on the spectrum. Look." He pointed at the lit up regions of the figure's brain, before tapping it, and enlarging the area. A 3D model was immediately shown on the display. "These lit up areas? Clusters of mutated cells, that's where the radiation seems to be coming from. I'd bet these are the areas that had tumors, and were targeted with DNA flagged radiation. That's why none of the dark areas are shown, they didn't get irradiated, so they're not causing the magnetism."

"Okay, back up," Gogo said, spinning Hiro around in his chair. "I know electromag. That's sort of my thing. What do you mean it's not on the spectrum?"

"I don't know," he admitted, though the excitement didn't melt from his features. "But that's what were gotta find out, isn't it?"

While all of this was going on, Aria stood in frustration just out of earshot. All she could do was take Hiro's animated excitement as a good sign, and as she tried to squint and read their lips, Baymax stood silently by her side. He was a robot, and usually didn't speak unless spoken to, but as the silence between them stretched on, Baymax scanned her neurological activity, taking note.

"You seem to emit less radiation when your emotional state is steady," he remarked, surprising Aria, who hadn't been expecting him to speak.

"Oh! Yeah, that's pretty much what I have figured out so far," she said, scratching at one of the electrodes.

"This would indicate that the electromagnetic radiation pulses are directly controlled by electrical impulses fired between neurotransmitters." His processor was running concurrently with Hiro's computer's, searching data bases for research on this topic. His search came up with nothing. "No research on a link between nueroelectric impulses and electromagnetivity has been conducted."

"Whoa whoa, wait!" Both heads snapped up as Hiro called out, nearly falling out of his chair as he scrambled to get out of it and run over. "Baymax, say that again? The think about the radiation being controlled by neurons?"

"I merely observed that her emotional state seems to directly influence the force behind her magnetic charge, indicating that the electromagnetic radiation pulses are directly controlled by electrical impulses fired between neurotransmitters." Hiro's face lit up at this.

"Baymax, you're a genius!" he said, running back into the garage, and erasing several long calculations that were written on a white erase board that dominated the back wall. He started scribbling things down, mumbling to himself, and from where Aria stood, she could just barely make out the calculations he was writing.

"Aaaaand…we've lost 'im," Wasabi sighed, smiling as he rolled his eyes. Shoving Fred's shoulder lightly, he stood. "C'mon, there's no way we're gonna be able to hold a conversation with him again tonight, not till he's got whatever's in his brain down on paper."

"I've got some calculations of my own to run, Honey Lemon put in, following as Wasabi started down the driveway.

"Well, I might as well go resmooth my blades," Gogo said, and as the crew left, all giving half-hearted farewells towards Hiro, who couldn't really hear them anyway, Aria watched on helplessly. What was she supposed to do? Stay here? Should she go now too? Did Hiro still need to run more tests on her?

"Uh..." she said, trying to catch the boy's attention. When he finally looked up, he seemed to realize for the first time that his friends had left, and he looked rather surprised.

"Oh!" he said, setting the dry erase marker down. "Huh, I guess they left."

"Yeah…should I go too?" Aria didn't know what time it was, but it had to be past five already, the sun was going to set soon.

"Well, where are you staying?" he asked, walking over to retrieve the electrodes. "Do you have family here in San Fransokyo or something? Me and Baymax will walk you."

"Oh! Well, I was just going to stay at one of the hostels," she said, pointing vaguely over her shoulder, towards the thick of the city. "All my family lives in Los Angelosaka, and I don't really have the cash for a hotel." Her cheeks heated up slightly as she rambled, knowing it sounded silly to someone she'd just met. "Uh, point is, I was just going to wander, you know? Till I found somewhere."

"Um, no," Hiro replied, cocking and eyebrow and giving her one of 'those' looks. "Are you crazy? Walk around San Fransokyo alone? At night? There are some real nutjobs in this city, it's crazy dangerous!"

"I could always commit a petty crime and spend the night in jail?" she joked, but when Hiro didn't laugh, her smile dropped, and her cheeks flushed harder. "This is the part where laughing usually happens, you know, when someone tells a joke…"

"Aunt Cass will have my hide if I let you leave to wander the city alone. C'mon, you can crash on our couch." As he plucked the little circles from her head, he motioned for her to follow. "And don't worry," he reiterated, upon seeing her hesitance to get too close to the workshop garage. "You won't wipe my hard drives, I promise! And even if you do, they're all backed up too."

"I'm not gonna be imposing on you and your Aunt?" she asked, taking small, slow steps after him. She tried her hardest to be an emotional blank slate, so as not to ruin any of his equipment.

"Please; Fred's over literally ALL the time," he said, waiting for her at the foot of the stairs leading from the garage to the flat. "And he stinks most of the time. You don't stink, it'll be much better than having Fred over."

"This is all very freakin' cliché," she muttered under her breath, too quiet for Hiro to hear. As she inched her way forward, her eyes were trained on the various screens around the workshop. She remembered vividly the first day she'd wiped a computer clean at the hospital. She really hoped this wouldn't be a repeat.

But to her great surprise, the screens and monitors didn't even static; she was able to cross the thresh hold just find, and when she came to stand next to Hiro at the foot of the small set of stairs, she turned, smiling at all the still working equipment. Sure, she'd rattled a few mice, and more than one flashdrive had rolled off the desk and tried to follow her, but that was so mild in comparison to what she was expected.

"I did it!" she gasped, surprised at her own emotional restraint. But when she pumped a fist in the air in victory, finally letting herself feel happy for not screwing something up, the nearest screen waivered, before going black. And then the next. And the next. And then the 3D printer went offline. Until finally the workshop was just a room full of empty computers.

"…like I said, they're all backed up."


	4. Chapter 4

"Mochi, get down!" Hiro batted the large cat, who was partially graying at the muzzle now, down off the couch. But Mochi was far too stubborn to be dismissed so easily, and jumped right back up. The boy just rolled his eyes, leaning back against the couch and sighing dramatically, and Aria laughed slightly. She didn't mind Mochi; she didn't have any pets back home, so she kind of liked having the cat around. And it was a good thing too, because Mochi would not leave Aria alone. "So, does your magnetism extend to animal magnetism too, or…?" he asked sarcastically, smiling over at her.

"Ha, I guess so," she replied, as Mochi settled down in her lap, purring. "He's cute. And fat. Do you guys feed him non stop or what?"

"He was born fat," Hiro chuckled, scratching the mischievous cat behind the ears. "I've never known a time when he wasn't."

"Excess body fat can lead to several health conditions, including heart disease, and diabetes," Baymax chimed in from the corner, and Aria rolled her eyes.

"You hear that, little guy?" she said, as Mochi looked up at her. "You gatta shed these pounds or you'll get kitty-betes!" Mochi meowed loudly, as if this had offended him, and immediately jumped down from her lap.

"You insulted my cat," Hiro said, "get out of my house!" He was smiling though, and the two of them burst out laughing. Aria smiled back at him, glad that this wasn't overly awkward. She had just met him, after all, and now here she was, sleeping in his living room. Life was so strange sometimes. As Hiro kicked off his shoes and propped his feet up on the coffee table, he leaned back and stretched. "So, I was thinking we could run a few more in-depth scans tomorrow morning. Then I'd really like to get some more electrodes on you, and measure brain activity during pulses. I have this idea, it's kind of crazy, but I think it could really help you, you know, to control this."

"Yeah?" Aria said, eyebrows raised in curiosity. "What's the idea?"

"Well, I mean, it's not anything concrete yet. I need to finish those calculations first, but I was thinking some kind of, you know," he pantomimed a helmet around his head, "apparatus you'd wear. If I could find out the exact mechanism behind the magnetism, I could maybe create a sort of, like, channeler for it. Contain it. And then make it easier to control."

"Like some big clunky helmet?" The description he was giving her sounded rather cumbersome to Aria, and it wasn't very hopeful. She'd have to wear some huge helmet from now on? But Hiro shook his head, and sat up.

"No, something smaller, more discreet. Something you could in theory wear undetected. Here, c'mon, I'll show you." Standing, he motioned for her to follow, and started towards the stairs on the far end of the room. She hesitated, knowing that once again, she'd be entering a space with countless delicate metal things, that Hiro probably did not want her screwing up. But with a bit more urging, and some deep breaths, she followed.

Hiro's loft bedroom wasn't big at all, and very, very cluttered, and it didn't help that half of it was sectioned off with a paper partition. Looking around, Aria noticed several small figurines, prototypes of bots it looked like, start to rattle across their shelves, but she blocked her nerves out, trying to keep calm. It seemed to work, as nothing came whizzing through the air towards her head.

Hiro dove into the mess that he called a desk, digging through a few drawers. He eventually produced a slim strip of metal that looked almost like a headband. "Here, check this out. This would be something like I'd want to make," he said, handing it to her when she walked up close. It was very light in her hands, and she turned it over to look at the underside.

"Is this the thing that controls the nanobots?" she asked, and he nodded vigorously. It obviously wasn't the original, as that one had been destroyed, but it looked very similar, with a few minor tweaks.

"Yeah, and the mechanism that does it isn't too different than what I'd want to use for yours. I could probably even make it smaller, less noticeable. But like I said, it's still just an idea…"

"Well, next to unmagnetizing me, it's the best idea I've heard so far," she said, and before she could stop it, or herself, she felt the metal start to pull from her hands. It slapped against her forehead somewhat painfully, and as she flinched, several nanobots lying around the room haphazardly started to rattle. Whether it was from the command of the headband, or from her attracting them magnetically, but they started to rattle towards her, until several outright picked up from their resting spots and flew at her head, sticking to her temple. "Ow! Jeez!" she said, plucking one from the side of her face to look at it.

"Ah, sorry about that!" As Aria examined the tiny contraption, Hiro reach towards her and began plucking the others from her head. She held the little robot up to her eyes, squinting at it. "Those things are…well, they're nothing but trouble, honestly."

"I guess I can see why you'd say that, but honestly, I'm just amazed at how small they are, and yet they can still do…well, you know how much they can do." She shrugged at him, as his face morphed into a somewhat uncomfortable expression.

"Yeah, well, they get everywhere. I always seem to find them all over the place." He opened a drawer in his desk and dropped the handful of nanobots in, shutting it quickly before they could spring out and smack Aria in the head again.

"You haven't been using them for anything?" she asked, pulling the headset from her forehead, with some difficulty. "I mean, I know what happened with them, but still. It's such an amazing piece of tech. You've gatta be doing something with them?"

"Nah." Hiro rubbed the back of his neck, collapsing back into his desk chair, motioning for Aria to take a seat on the bed. "I've got so many other projects I've been working on, and Baymax always needs upgrades. Not to mention our suits require constant maintenance, and my doctoral final project, it's all just a bit much to find time here and there to tinker with a long-dead idea. Besides." His eyes darted briefly to the paper partition on the other side of the room, before settling back on Aria, "it feels too bitter to work with them, really. Too much…stuff surrounding them."

"Yeah, I guess I get that." Aria still didn't understand why Hiro didn't sell, or even give the nanobots to someone else to further develop. It was such an amazing product, surely some good could come out of it? But, it was his invention after all. He could do with it as he pleased, even if that meant packing it away. And Aria could definitely relate to not wanting anything to do with things that brought up bad memories. "Sorry I asked."

"No, no, it's alright!" He forced a smile back on, and shook his head. "It was just an honest question."

"You can ask me an uncomfortable question if you want. You know, to get back at me," she joked, which caused a genuine smile and laugh to overtake Hiro's features. She realized he crooked front teeth, but it sort of added to his oddball charm. Made him seem more real.

"Ah, well, when I think of one, I'll catch you off guard with it, how's that sound?" She nodded, smirking at him, knowing it probably would catch her very off guard and embarrass her, but hey, it was what she deserved, right? Pulling her legs up to sit criss cross on his head, her eyes followed him as he got up and walked over to the windowsill, where several small gadgets sat, and picked one up. Snagging a small screw driver as well, he flopped down on the bed beside her, and started to tinker with it. It seemed so casual, like he'd just decided on a whim to start working on an intricate piece of machinery, and it almost seemed funny to Aria. She would never understand computer types.

"Man, I could never work something like that," she said, watching him slowly take the thing, whatever it was, apart piece by piece.

"It's always sort of come easy to me," she said, shrugging.

"Says the kid who graduated high school at 13," she retorted.

"'Ey, what can I say? I'm a genius!" He tossed a somewhat cocky smile at her, and Aria rolled her eyes, but turned her face away quickly; a tiny blush had crept up on her cheeks, and she didn't want him to see. "But, it kind of runs in the family, you know?" he continued, not seeming to notice Aria's rosy cheeks. "Tadashi was a prodigy as well, though he was always better with programming than I was; I'm more of a hands-on, mechanical kind of guy. My Dad worked for one of the biggest software companies in the nation as their head tech engineer. And my mom wasn't into computers, but I hear she was one hell of a mechanic." He tossed the screwdriver he held from one hand to the other, smiling at it. "Heh. So I guess it was always sort of, you know, destiny that I'd do stuff like this. Though I don't really believe in all that 'destiny' and 'fate' stuff."

"My Dad's a used car salesman and my mom makes a mean baked spaghetti casserole. So what does that spell out for my future?"

"Hmmm…I'd wager something involving a food truck," he joked, raising one eyebrow and smirking. Aria shoved his shoulder playfully.

"What a destiny!" Aria continued to watch him tinker, and jokes and quips flowed fairly easily between them, something she was greatly relieved about. Her worst nightmare was to be annoying or awkward around the guy who she was pleading to help her, and this was just such a relief, to be talking with him so normally! It almost seemed like they were old friends, judging by the way conversation flowed so easily back and forth. It was comfortable.

"Here, hold out your hand," he said, taking her outstretched hand when she offered it. Before she could protest, he was sticking a small screw from the device he was working on, on each of her fingers, laughing as they all, of course, stuck to her magnetically. She pouted mockingly, and tried to shake them off. But right as she was, and Hiro was reaching to take them back, his Aunt Cass stuck her head up from the stairwell into the loft.

"Dinner's ready Hiro, are any of the gang staying to eat-well, hello, what's going on?" Seeing the obviously playful exchange between her nephew and the girl she'd met only this afternoon, she climbed the remaining few stairs, as Hiro finally retrieved the screws, and Aria felt a small twinge of panic in the pit of her gut. As she let her guard down, the screws flew once more from Hiro's grip, towards her temple. She was only just able to bat them away in time to save herself a few holes in her head.

"We'll be right down, Ant Cass," Hiro said nonchalantly, "and Aria's staying the night, she didn't have anywhere else to go."

"You do realize how strange all of this is?" Cass said sarcastically, folding her arms in front of her. "If you weren't always surrounded by ridiculous things, Hiro, I wouldn't allow it." She turned her gaze to Aria, who to her, seemed like a very nice, albeit weird girl. But who was she to judge? Hiro was the weirdest kid Cass knew, and she meant that in the most loving way possible. "In the future, maybe the homeowner would like to be alerted to these kinds of things?"

"Sorry, I figured you'd be okay with it," he said, surprised that Cass was putting up any kind of resistance to it at all. She just shook her head, casting her eyes skyward briefly, and waved them to follow her.

"Well, of course I am, if she's got nowhere else to go!" Aria stood and followed the two downstairs, suddenly feeling very out of place. The warm, comfortable feeling she'd had before was gone now. "Hiro, with all those brains of yours, you can be pretty clueless!"

"What?" He cast a look back at Aria, silently asking what the hell Cass was being fussy about. She was right though; he was a genius, but some things just seemed to go right over his head.


	5. Chapter 5

When Wasabi lifted the garage door the next morning after Hiro had texted the gang to come over, they all pretty much expected to see Hiro running tests, maybe, or working on a program on his computer, and Aria with something comically stuck to her again. But what they were greeted with was much crazier.

The whiteboard was absolutely full to the brim with calculations. Both sides were covered in seemingly random and nonsensical numbers and symbols. Cords ran every which way, some dangling haphazardly from the rafters. Two of the four monitors were blank or fizzing out with short bursts of static, and the printer near the corner as constantly churning out print outs of readings from one of the two working computers. Aria sat on the couch holding a smartphone to her chest, and was crying inconsolably as Hiro tried his best to dislodge the various metal items that had stuck themselves to not just Aria's head, but the rest of her body as well. They both paused briefly as the garage door was opened.

"Hey guys," Hiro said weakly, not expecting them so soon. Aria tried to contain her crying, but choking back the sobs was proving difficult.

"…Whatever's going on here," Fred spoke up, "I'm totally digging it! Chaos, man, it's sweet!" He was promptly smacked by Gogo.

"Oh, Aria, what's wrong?" Honey Lemon said, tuttering over to sit beside the dark-haired girl.

"It's…it's…these kittens…they were thrown in a river and then they got rescued and they all found ho-o-omes!" Aria broke down again, overemotional from the youtube video Hiro had handed her to watch. Another one of the screens went dark, before fizzing into static.

"There goes another one," Hiro sighed, scratching his head. He leaned on one arm on the nearest desk, pinning down the keyboard that was threatening to lift from the surface and attach itself to Aria.

"Okay, I have to once again be the voice of reason, but what the heck is going on here?" Wasabi blurted out, a look of incredulous confusion on his features. "This place looks like a tornado hit it, Hiro looks like he hasn't slept in a week, Aria's inconsolable, and…and I don't like chaos!"

"Yeah, Hiro, start talking, this is weird." Gogo paused, picking up a nearby cord that lay lifeless on the ground, "even for you."

"I couldn't sleep," Hiro said, using his other hand to hold down the monitor of the nearest computer. "I kept thinking about the formula. I had to come down and finish it, and before I knew it, it was already morning. But look!" He nodded towards the white board, as Honey Lemon stood to try and make sense of it all. "I finished it!"

"…This is...Gogo, come take a look at this," the tall blonde said, lifting her glasses to squint at it. Gogo crossed her arms as she walked over, but slowly, her face morphed from vague annoyance, to surprise, to awe.

"No way…" she whispered, looking up at Hiro. "This is-"

"It didn't have a name," he said, smiling wide. He stretched, kicking the corner of the white board with the tip of his shoe, and it swung around to the other side. "So I went ahead and named it. It's not Gamma radiation, but it's more powerful than that. It almost…sort of…like, splinters off from the electromagnetic spectrum, and then runs concurrently to it. And so if we're gonna stick to Greek letters here, I chose Sigma Radiation. You know. Can't break the pattern."

"Hiro," Honey Lemon gasped, "This is amazing! I can't believe you did this!"

"…I'm speechless," Gogo said, shaking her head. "So you really didn't get any sleep last night. But that still doesn't explain why Aria's bawling her eyes out over there."

"Oh! I wanted to get some data on the link between her emotional state and the power of the electromagnetic pulses. So I had to make her cry."

"Very gentlemanly of you." Gogo rolled her eyes, and walked over, snatching the phone out of Aria's hands. "That's enough of that." Aria was surprised by then, but she did begin to calm down after that, the things that were stuck to her slowly getting unstuck. Once Hiro didn't have to hold down his appliances any longer, he began rebooting each computer, reloading the backed up harddrives.

"So, this is all great and everything," Fred said, plucking a computer mouse from Aria's upper arm, "But what are you gonna, like, DO with all this stuff?"

"Already on it," Hiro answered, connecting the 3D printer to the network once more, and hitting 'resume project'. Instantly, the large appliance jumped to life, and resumed the printing of a small object. It was just the carbon fiber skeleton of the device, but once it was done, Hiro began tinkering with it, attaching it to his main processor by some thin cords. "I'm gonna need you guys to bring up another sad video on that phone here in a minute, I wanna test this thing out." He uploaded a specially made program into the device, which he'd just threaded with the proper hardware, and then unplugged it. "Moment of truth; catch, Aria!" Tossing it, Aria was only just able to catch it, and she slipped it on her head. It was almost a complete circle, and it sat over her forehead snuggly.

"Here, watch this one about orphans in Sri Lanka," Fred said, handing the phone to Aria. Honey Lemon and Wasabi sat on either side of her on the small couch, and before long, the three of them were teary eyed. "Yup," Fred said, rather proudly. "Sri Lankan orphans. Gets 'em every time."

But as tears started to slip past Aria's cheeks, nothing in the workshop rattles. Nothing lifted. Nothing came crashing towards her head. The only indication that the magnetic radiation was oscillating was the faint, brief flicker of each screen in the room, and the insane readout scrolling across the screen of Hiro's computer. Aria was still hooked up to the electrodes, and Hiro could monitor levels of radiation, and they were slowly climbing. But nothing. Nothing was happening.

"Yes!" he cheered, smiling wide again, and once Aria noticed, her chest tightened up, and more tears spilled down her face. Not because of the plight of the orphans on the screen this time, but because, for the first time in a long while, she wasn't having various metal objects fly towards her head. She was normal. Or as close to normal as possible at the moment, and for her, that was good enough.


	6. Chapter 6

"Hiro, no tech at the table!" Aunt Cass smacked her nephew's hand with the serving spoon as she passed behind him, causing him to drop the headband he was tinkering with.

"Ow! Jeez!" he whined, rubbing the back of his hand, now turning a brilliant red, and Cass shook her head, placing the bowl of salad on the table. Aria sat across from Hiro, flanked by Honey Lemon and Fred. Wasabi was across from Fred, fussing over the placement of each fork and spoon in front of him, and Gogo was leaning in closer to Hiro on his other side as the two of them discussed the specifics of the headband's final design.

"You should really come to the lab sometime," Honey was saying, passing Aria the serving bowl of rice, "Everyone there would love to meet you!"

"I dunno," Aria shrugged, pursing her lips. "I'm not really into being everyone's science experiment. I mean, I came here so I could gain a little bit of normalcy in my life, not become more of a spectacle."

"Oh, no no! That's not what I meant! I mean, just to hang out with us and meet new people! While you're here in San Fransokyo!" Aria couldn't help but smile back as Honey beamed at her; the girl just had an infectious smile! She was just so sweet and cheerful, Aria had taken an instant liking to her.

"It's not against the rules?" she asked, passing wasabi the soysauce when he asked for it. "For a non student to be on campus?"

"No, or else I'd never get to hang out with these dudes!" Fred interrupted, dumping a huge spoonful of wasabi into his rice and mixing it in.

"Yeah, it might be nice having someone else who isn't totally crazy around," Wasabi chimed in, and Honey Lemon laughed that melodic laugh of hers.

"Oh, Wasabi, you're so silly!" she said, and the smile she threw at him was a bit different than her regular grin. It made Aria wonder if there was anything between the two.

"Hiro, please!" Cass shot him a pained look from the head of the table as she sat down. "Tables are for eating, NOT testing the integrity of internal magnetic servos; put. It. Away." The group broke into chuckles at this, as Hiro returned his Aunt's stern look, before getting up to leave it on the nearby end table.

"So whaddya say?" Fred asked, with his mouth full. "Gonna come hang out with us awesome dudes and dudettes?"

"Well, if it's alright, sure," she finally said, rather sheepishly. "I'm not very science-y, though, like you guys."

"Anyone can appreciate science, though," Wasabi said, "you don't have to be a brain surgeon to think it's cool."

"I guess that's true…okay, then. Sounds like a plan." Honey let out a squeal of happiness, giving Aria a side-hug, as Fred threw his arms up, nearly overturning every single dinnerware in front of him. 'Jeez, these guys are animated,' Aria thought, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. She wasn't all that popular back home, in fact, she'd been so unknown in her hometown, it was a wonder her parents even knew who she was. She was so introverted, most days she just spent in her room, reading or writing alone. But this was nice. These guys were nice. It was like having real friends, and she liked it. It was a great feeling!

Aria continually had trouble with her silverware sticking to her hands and refusing to be put down throughout the dinner, but the one thing that was really occupying her mind was how Gogo and Hiro were bent close, heads together, discussing the hardware for her magnetic radiation regulator. She didn't know why that bothered her so much. Maybe it was the familiarity between them; they were friends, obviously, had been through a lot together. Maybe it was their shared intellect; they both knew so much about mechanical science, it was alarming, and they could share and bond over that knowledge freely. Maybe it was simply how Gogo looked; she was like a taller, edgier, older version of Aria, who looked like she could be Gogo's skinny kid sister. Any of those was a good excuse for her unsettling feeling. But she tried to push that down. Mostly because it was causing the salt shaker to try and slide across the table towards her repeatedly.

* * *

><p>"Hmm, need my .5 screwdriver," Hiro mused, turning the regulator over in his hands again. It was just him and Aria and Aunt Cass now (to Aria's relief) as the latter two were in the kitchen, finishing up the dinner dishes.<p>

"You could help with the clean up, you know," Cass said sarcastically, though she knew Hiro wouldn't.

"Not now, Aunt Cass, gatta fix this!" he called over his shoulder, as he vaulted over the back of the couch, and over towards the staircase. "Aria, c'mon, I gatta try something!"

"Uh, well, I'm still doing dishes-" Aria turned, only to see Hiro had disappeared up the stairs, and her lips formed a thin line across her face. Cass wore a similar expression.

"That boy," the older woman sighed, dunking the plate she held in the soapy water. Aria cracked a small smile. "Well, go on. I can finish up here."

"Are you sure?" she asked, but Cass just smiled kindly.

"Yeah, go on. I'm sure whatever he's got to show you is something big. Besides, we're almost done here, and I can get the rest. You've already been a big enough help as it is." Aria smiled gratefully at her, before following Hiro towards the stairs. That boy did not appreciate his Aunt enough, she thought.

"Okay, what's so importa-aaAAAHH whoa what!?" Aria nearly fell backwards down the stairs when she reached the top. Hiro was pulling his SFT sweatshirt off, and his tshirt under it had gotten stuck to it, and gotten pulled up as well. This, understandably, took Aria by surprise, and as she stumbled backwards, nearly tumbling down the stairs, the metal immediately around her jerked to life, and whizzed through the air. Not towards her, though. No, this time, she'd sent metal objects flying away from her, and a set of keys flew from their hook on the wall, and smacked Hiro right in the chest. This caused him to fall backwards, still caught up in his sweatshirt, into his rolling desk chair, which sent him careening backwards into his bookshelf. Several of his fighting bot prototypes fell down then from the top of said bookshelf, onto Hiro's head, causing him to shout out in pain. Finally, hearing Hiro, Baymax started to inflate, from where he was charging at his station, and make his way over.

"I heard a cry of distress. Please rate your pain from 1 to 10." He said, in his signature, non-intimidating voice.

"What…the heck was that!?" Hiro said, wrestling his way out of his sweatshirt, and pulling his tshirt back down. He hadn't meant to sound so angry, he was mostly just winded, but Aria physically flinched away from his hostile tone.

"I…I don't know! I'm sorry! That's never happened before!" she stuttered, surprised at herself for doing that. She'd never repelled objects before! Hiro bent to pick up the set of keys, and looked incredulously at Aria.

"You can repel objects!?" he asked, one corner of his mouth pulling up. "I didn't know you could…I thought…jeez, this changes everything!" He tossed the keys onto his bed, and went over to his desk, pulling out a notepad and a pencil. He scribbled some calculations down, and let out a short, curt laugh.

"I'm sorry, I'm not following," Aria said, walking up behind him. "Are you mad? Or…happy? I can't tell."

"I'm in awe of your abilities," Hiro said, casting a smile back at her. "Okay. Tomorrow, more tests. We've got to fix a few bugs in this regulator, but…oh man, do I have plans for this!"

Somehow, this did not soothe Aria's nerves.

* * *

><p>"How many?"<p>

"Just two, sir."

"And they're both missing?"

"Yes sir." The older man sat hunched over his desk, holding the sides of his head in his hands. He was graying, perhaps prematurely, and wore thick glasses that turned his usually small eyes into fun-house mirror versions of themselves. His assistant stood nervously nearby in the cramped, dark office.

"This isn't good, Hattingfeild," the older man sighed, casting an angry glance at the younger physician. "This isn't just some clerical error. This isn't a botched rhinoplasty. This isn't even a wrongful amputation. This is big."

"It won't happen again, sir," Hattingfeild said, a small quiver in his voice.

"You're right. This won't happen again. None of it." The older man stood up then. "Cut the program. Refund the grant. Destroy files on the patients. I don't care how you do it, burn the hospital down if you need to."

"Sir?"

"Miss Tsukino and Mr. Ome were never treated here, do you understand me?" His eyes looked tired, just so tired. Like he'd seen too much. "This tech? It never existed. Deny the treatment, discredit the side effects. None of this can come to light, do you hear me? It would ruin me."

"Yes sir. I understand completely."


	7. Chapter 7

"This isn't going to shock me or anything, right?" Aria held the regulator at arm's length, peering at it apprehensively. It had shocked Hiro not five minutes ago as he was 'puttin on the final touches', and she certainly didn't want to get shocked in the head. Though, if a shock to the head was what it took to get unmagnetized…

"I swear," Hiro promised, leaning back in his swivel chair. The two of them had gone back down to the garage to work on it, as Hiro had wanted to add a few more features in light of Aria's newly discovered powers of magnetic repulsion. Aria stared at the device a few more seconds, before slowly setting it on top of her head. It fit snugly around her temples, wrapping across her forehead, and a wave of relief washed over her as she felt no electricity coursing through her brain. "See? Told you."

"How's the shock burn?" she asked wryly, reaching out to look at his hand, and his slightly singed fingertips.

"Just fine, thanks for asking." Sticking his tongue out playfully, he swiveled around, and went back to typing something into his program. "Now that we've got the regulator out of the way, we can get to the fun part."

"Fun part?" she said, confused as to what he meant by that. "What do you mean, 'fun part'. This IS the fun part; not being magnetized any more."

"Weeeeell…" He clicked a few things on the monitor, before pushing off and rolling across the room to the 3D display on the other side. He pulled up a file, which contained something that looked like a glove, and started to manipulate it. "Y'see, I've been thinking. This is…well, this is beyond amazing! This is like, superhero stuff. Do you know how much Fred would very literally kill for this opportunity?" Hiro said this with a laugh, but it was no joke; Fred would kill to have legitimate super powers. "And I mean, yeah, we've got to control it. But why stop there?"

"Hiro," Aria said, a warning in her tone, but he ignored her.

"I could definitely build something like this, to channel the regulated power through. So instead of attracting and repelling things at random based on your mood, you'd be able to control it better, through specialized ports built into things like shoes or gloves. Look!" He waved her over, and she honestly didn't know if she wanted to humor him by coming to look. But she did anyway, wary of what he had to show her. "I don't know if you'd ever be able to control it on your own, you know, naturally," he continued, enlarging the 3D map of the gauntlet on the display, "But maybe. And in that case, these would be like training wheels. Teaching your cells how to keep the radiation channeled through specific parts of your body. So maybe, in the future, you wouldn't have to wear a regulator at all."

Now that; that appealed to Aria. Getting to walk around like a normal human being again, not having to worry about crying and pulling a car off the road or something. It was all she really wanted, the only thing really, and if these gloves or whatever were the only thing that would help her get back to that, then so be it.

"Okay, well, I like the sound of that…but why are they so clunky? Couldn't they be slim or discreet like the regulator?"

"Uh, haha, well…that's the other thing." He looked sideways at her, sheepishly, and pulled up another file, this one containing the make up of a whole suit. Just like the rest of Big Hero 6's.

"No." It was quick, and it was definite. She was not going to be some crime fighting superhero. She just wasn't.

"Aria, you didn't even have to hear what I was gonna-"

"I'm not joining Big Hero 6 as Magno-girl, the electro-magnetic freak," she said bluntly, and Hiro scrambled to show her the specifics of the suit, in an effort to persuade her.

"But just look! The helmet's got the regulator built in, plus it syncs up to the rest of ours, so we can communicate wirelessly. The chanellers are built into the gauntlets and sleeves, you've got regulatory circuiting throughout the suit…and c'mon, think of how cool it would be!?" He looked so excited and eager, there was something inside Aria that was telling her to just say yes, if only to make him happy. But that wasn't really what she wanted. She wanted to be normal, not some super-powered outcast.

"Hiro," she said, rubbing the back of her neck uncomfortably, "I just don't know. I'm not looking for fame, or renound, or glory or whatever. I just want to be normal. That's…not exactly normal."

"Just think about it, okay?" he asked, taking her hand briefly. Her cheeks instantly flared up red, and she looked away, pouting. How dare he fluster her so easy! Damn him and his goofy smile, and genuine laugh and honest eyes…

"Fine. I'll think about it. In the meantime…let's just practice with the chanellers." Hiro nodded, complacent with that answer. It was a maybe. And a maybe could easily turn into a yes.

"Perfect, that's just fine with me," he smiled, reaching back to send the design to the 3D printer. Aria watched the machine in the corner snap to life, and begin the intricate process of weaving the exterior of the gauntlets out. They'd be sitting there a while, waiting. That was never good. "Soooo…why'd your parents stay in Los Angelosaka?" Hiro asked, and Aria instantly regretted telling him he had permission to ask her an awkward or painful question the other night.

"Umm…just, you know. Work and stuff," she said, trying to dodge the question.

"So they just sent you out alone? Man, Cass would never do that." He tried to imagine his over-protective Aunt allowing him to waltz off across Japanifornia all on his lonesome, and he nearly laughed out loud! That would never happen.

"Ah, well, you know. You're big news, Hiro. Child genius and all that. They knew you could help." Her lie sounded seamless enough, and she was relieved that Hiro was actually buying it.

"I'm no child genius," he said, in what Aria assumed was false modesty, though he cracked one of his wide, off-center grins. "I'm a man genius, actually."

"Oh…whatever!" Again with the blushing, Aria didn't know why this boy made her feel all flustered! This hadn't really ever happened to her before! Not that she was babyish, I was just that, for 18 years of her life, she'd just locked herself up in her room full of books. She'd never had a crush before; well, that wasn't true. She'd had crushes, but mostly on fictional characters. This was the first flesh-and-blood guy whom she wasn't related to that she'd spent so much time around. She couldn't help but feel nervous and flustered. Didn't help that Hiro was a real gem of a guy.

"You know," he said, breaking into her thoughts and pulling her back out into the world of the living. "When I was younger, I was kind of…well, a handful. I guess I still am. I didn't have a whole lot of friends, just my inventions. And Tadashi. And other bot fighters. But they weren't really my friends. I was leagues ahead of other kids my age, and people who could match me in smarts didn't usually want to hang out with a young kid like I was. So I was alone a lot. And then, after everything that happened, me and Gogo, Honey, Wasabi, Fred, we all just meshed so well together, but I always attributed it to all the stuff we went through together. How could you not grow close to people in that situation?" He paused, shaking his head minutely. "I guess I'd always been wondering, if Tadashi hadn't…well, if everything that happened, didn't happen, would I have been friends with them? I kinda think not. I was feeling a little down, to be honest, that I didn't know if I could make a friend on my own merit. And while I know you sought me out to get my help with a problem…I sort of feel like we're becoming friends, you know, organically? Like, maybe I am friend material." He looked sideways at Aria, gauging her reaction; he didn't want that to freak her out or make her think he was weird; it was just something he'd been thinking about recently. They'd known each other for only three days, and already, he felt so comfortable with her. It felt easy being around Aria. He didn't have to compete with her in knowledge, she wasn't the 'prodigy' type, and he didn't have to dumb himself down to be around her, she wasn't stupid. She was quiet, but sarcastic, wry, but warm. He really liked her. And he really liked that he was growing close to her. He liked friends.

"I felt kinda the same," she said, totally pink in the face, but not trying to hide it this time. "I'm not really very social on my own. Only when I'm forced to be. So, I'm not really glad I was magnetized, but…I'm sorta glad I had an excuse to meet you. If that doesn't sound cheesy or anything."

"Not at all." They both sat there, smiling at one another for a moment, but the calm comradery was shattered once the 3D printer had finished the first gauntlet, and made a rather abrupt 'It's ready' warning sound. "Sweet, it's finished! Time to thread and program this baby, and then we can test it out!"


End file.
